Some of the placemats are shown as small bitmaps, typically at 50% scale.
These bitmaps were not consistently generated.
A black 0.24pt line appears in some as faint gray (“Apple Quartz PDF Importer”); in others as a black pixel (“dynapdf Importer”).
For example, see the tasting of 21 July 2015.
If it matters, inspect the PDF.
If it really matters, inspect a printout of the relevant pages of the PDF.

Some observations about my use of the software.

Functionality has changed over the versions. Mostly, that has been the addition of page types and of settings.
Less often, functionality has been removed, either because it was unreliable, or was too difficult to maintain, or was thought that it somehow didn’t fit, or was ugly.

My style has changed.
In early placemats the Titles were very heavy and black, with the mistaken objective of them being readable through the liquid.
Then the patterning become stronger and more varied. But the varied patterning made it more difficult to compare colours.
More white behind the liquid makes the colour easier to perceive, done by by /InlineTitlesMaxNumberContours 1 def, since 2014 this look being frequent.
Hence the modern preference for light consistency.

Despite which, some playfulness is still good. Do play.

The software and its user-written parameters are in PostScript, and the code has many places that enable, indeed encourage, code injection.
The user has access to the code’s internal parameters, and to the full power of the PostScript programming language.
It is likely that I use this more than most other users of the software.

The immediate evaluation of some names (“//”) and the bind have no affect other than a slight speeding of execution, so may be omitted.

I think this can look acceptable if the two words are of similar length and lack descenders (‘Rebello Valente’, perhaps ‘Ramos Pinto’), but not if they are of very different lengths or have descenders (‘Smith Woodhouse’, ‘Tuke Holdsworth’; ‘Butler Nephew’, ‘Gonzalez Byass’, ‘Gould Campbell’, ‘Quarles Harris’, ‘Royal Oporto’).

First use of droplets (general discussion, specific discussion).
Still experimenting with values for DropletsCharges.
There is a +20 attractive charge on Dow; -2 repelling charge on Offley; and other small charges not relevant for this calculation (+1 Cr; -3 G-2016); +1 GC).
So going from Dow to a little past Offley, somewhere in Taylor’s circle, is a balance point (not quite Lagrange, nor quite a termination shock) which — for my palate — gives some intricate structure. Different opinions welcomed.

A very elegant design.
The one imperfection was that the filling of the stars was done with two grays, 0.875 and 0.9375, which were too similar.
Of course, on a different printer it might have been perfect.
Note to self: next time test 0.75 and 0.9375.

In the printouts was a slight bleed, a very thin line of filled black showing outside the clipped white stars at the edge of the Titles.
Henceforth this can be prevented by setting to false the new parameters ShapesTitlesClip, ShapesAbovetitlesClip, ShapesBelowtitlesClip, ShapesOvertitlesClip, and ShapesPlaceNamesClip.

Several errors — I hope that my usual standard is better than this.
SCD had withdrawn but was still on the placemats; DRT was on twice; and WG who replaced SCD wasn’t at all.
And, after the event, comment was made about there being different values of OvertitleFontSizes.
All of which was sloppy.

DejaVu fonts are open-source, free, and cover a large subset of unicode characters.
So tested here were /DejaVuSansCondensed-Bold (TitlesFont), DejaVuSerifCondensed (CircletextFont, HeaderFont) and /DejaVuSerif (NamesFont).
Not much liked.

First usage of VoteRecorderMonkeyWhenShowTotalRow and VoteRecorderMonkeyName.

There are twelve n/m stars with n, m coprime; and inner radius, and angle at point, between that of a 7/2 and 7/3.
These are 5/2, 7/2, 7/3, 8/3, 11/4, 12/5, 13/5, 17/7, 18/7, 19/8, 22/9, and 26/11.
But the output wasn’t elegant: the high‑n stars looked too similar.

On 30 Nov 2002 placemats switched from being artisanal to being industrial.
These placemats—more accurately, the glasses pages of these placemats—are very similar to the not-used last of the artisanals.

Also a very complicated PrologueCode, which creates [n,m] data and forms for the stars, then execformed by PaintBackgroundInsideGlassCircles (with /InlinePrefillWhitetruedef).
That allowed the stars’ parameters to be computed together, to maximise resonance with CirclearraysN.

/LogThisExtra(Glasses on these sheets might be the cover photograph of The Book. Hence: Names omitted from Circlearrays, though not from CirclearraysTastingNotes etc; and three copies of JDAW glasses sheets, to allow post-spillage retakes.)def

These placemats caused re-observation, and this time understanding, of a bug in Adobe Distiller.
If FlightSeparationPaintSeparately is false and there are multiple lines on one page, the apparent ends of some lines are controlled by setlinejoin rather than setlinecap.
(See manual.)

Activation of CrossHatchingBackground (renamed to CrossHatchingInside) and CrossHatchingTitles has become rare.
Which is fortunate, given the clash with TastingNotesCirclesBehind.
Bug fixed as of version dated 16:00 Monday 15th February 2016—too late for this tasting.

There are sticky labels, seemingly without glasses sheets.
But the sticky labels are merely copies of what is on the glasses sheets.
So there are glasses sheets, zero copies of which are shown:
/GlassesNumCopies 0 def.

It has been said that “You can take the man out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the man”,
and equivalently that “You can take the girl out of the trailer park but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl”.
(Yes yes, man/girl thing: I’m quoting; find something important about which to have a bee in your bonnet. This isn’t it.)
The same is true of the placemats: even without placemats, there will be placemats.

Unusually, Titles, TitlesTastingNotes and TitlesVoteRecorder all different; and SubtitlesTastingNotes different from all of Abovetitles, Belowtitles, and Overtitles.
Also, /TitlesFont/GilliusADF-BoldConddef.

It would have been better if the parameter since called PackingNestingColumnMajor had been true. Anyway, Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Sodium, Magnesium:

On the small sticky labels (5×13 on A4) the CircletextFont is an element of Names; everywhere else it is part of the wine description.
Hence /CircletextFont{TypeOfPagesBeingRendered /StickyLabelsne{//true}{StickyLabelsTypeThis 0 eq}ifelse{TitlesFont}{NamesFont}ifelse}def

Lots of complicated parameters, available in full from the Param’s post.

Much faffing with margins, so that those on the glasses sheet are different, MarginB being large.

/FlightSeparationstruedef, and, even more unusually, with /FlightSeparationPaintSeparatelytruedef.
The first three items of FlightSeparationLines define /Closed paths, used by FlightSeparationPaintCode (“FlightSeparationLineNum 0 eq”, then 1, then 2) as clipping regions. Decorative lines, very thin, are painted.
The remainder of FlightSeparationLines defines the boundary paths.
FlightSeparationPaintCode does nothing with these until the last one, so these are in effect not …PaintSeparately’d.
And that last item paints a thick black line inside a gsave … grestore, and then a less thick white line.
The setlinecaps avoid bleed.

There is a broader lesson from these complicated parameters.
The program is written in PostScript, and is structured to allow, perhaps even encourage, code injection.
In almost all parameters the user has full access to the whole of PostScript, and to the values of the variables maintained by the code.
E.g., FlightSeparationLineNum is there to be used.
That gives great power, but full access to that power requires being able to use PostScript.

New version of code in which an upper bound for InlineTitlesMaxNumberContours is computed automatically (as asked on 02 Apr 2014), and in which CircletextsTweakSize causes Circlearrays to be tight packed (as asked on 21 Mar 2014).

There are sticky labels, seemingly without glasses sheets.
But the sticky labels can only contain copies of what is on the glasses sheets.
So there are glasses sheets, zero copies of which are shown:
/NonDecanterLabelGlassesNumCopies 0 def (later renamed to /GlassesNumCopies).

The previous usage of the font /SnowtopCaps was ghastly.
This usage was better.

A rare use of PaintBackgroundCode, and, even rarer, that containing a use of MakePathConnectingGlasses.
The layout could have been done with a blank glass and /PseudoHexagonal, but was instead done with
/PermittedPackingStyles[[[1 1][5 1][0 2][2 2][4 2][6 2][0 0][2 0][4 0][6 0]]]def, which also had the advantage of putting the glasses into the desired order.
(Edit June 2013 and May 2016: since this placemat was made PermittedPackingStyles has been renamed to PackingStyles and its workings changed.)

There are sticky labels, seemingly without glasses sheets.
But the sticky labels can only contain copies of what is on the glasses sheets.
So there are glasses sheets, zero copies of which are shown:
/NonDecanterLabelGlassesNumCopies 0 def (later renamed to /GlassesNumCopies).

Arrays in PermittedPackingStyles (since renamed to PackingStyles); and many parameters auto-computed from Circlearrays.
The formatting ‘convention’ is generally applicable to a vertical comprising a mixture of a shipper’s VPs and SQVPs, and works well.
VPs are shown black, with the shipper name in the Belowtitles.
SQVPs are shown with InlineTitles being true, and the Quinta name in the Overtitles.
Variations on this had been used for the
Delaforce on 24 Apr 2012,
Fonseca on 04 Apr 2011, and
Malvedos on 22 Mar 2010.

This was then the usual format for a vertical of VP and SQVP: (e.g., Graham and Malvedos on 13 Nov 2012).
But the variation in brightness makes it difficult to compare colours. Hence for this class of designs my enthusiasm has diminished.

A pleasing format for a horizontal. /TitlesFont/LucidaSans-Demidef, and
/InlineTitlestruedef.
Every item of Abovetitles is [(1){-0.12 Kern}(977)],
being a version of “1977” kerned by 0.12×the font size, and shown unadorned,
so /InlineAbovetitlesfalsedef.
But perhaps next time the CircletextFont should be a serif font, rather than /LucidaSans.
Perhaps, perhaps not.

Complicated placemats, with BackgroundTextsGlassesTexts, and code in parameters such as NonDecanterLabelGlassesNumCopies (later renamed to /GlassesNumCopies), PrePourNumCopies, StickyLabelsNumCopies, and HeaderCenterText.

My preference would have been a little lighter and simpler, but was asked “… tasting in London tomorrow evening …. Please make your finest … blind tasting one-page placemat using as many new features as possible.”

Fonts: /Baskerville-Bold, /Baskerville-Italic, and /Baskerville.
In summer 2011, the scaling of the pre-pour pages was much improved, such that the content became bigger and the wasted space became less.

There’s so much wrong with this.
The dense black is ugly.
The inconsistency between the black and gray probably impeded colour comparison.
And thirteen glasses fit perfectly well on a single /A3.
But if the look is rather 1960s, not wholly inappropriate.

For a pure vertical, without a need for VP-SQVP distinctions, the elegance is enhanced by the slender font /Geo112ThinBold.
The cursive “Warre” was in /AmazeItalic; the Circlearrays in /AmerettoCondensedBold.

It used to be possible to vary, by NameNum, the Titles etc and their decoration.
That is, each person would get placemats that varied by more than just the name on the page.
The parameter enabling this, VariesByNameTitlesAboveBelowOverOrnaments, became to difficult to reconcile with the growing number of page types, so after a long time of not working properly, was removed from the code in early 2019.

What was I thinking? Just gratuitously gaudy. Also reprehensible is the redundancy between the Titles and the Overtitles (as they have since been renamed). Please, readers, do not do this. Additionally, Messias Cachão is ‘MsC’—more awfulness.

A very worthwhile decanting experiment.
My conclusion “But the results were close enough for there to be general agreement that the decanting method makes, at most, very little difference.”
AHB’s conclusion: “… the differences were not pronounced enough to worry me at all in the future. I can now relax and be less obsessive about the way that I decant and hope others decant — now it just means that I can choose the easiest thing to do.”

The abbreviation for Cockburn was later standardised to “Ck”, and for Croft to “Cr”.

The design was functional, but flawed.
I now dislike the redundancy between the parameters since renamed to Titles and Overtitles.
And I also dislike the aesthetics, though acceptable by the standards of 2008.

It might be that the commercial organiser of the tasting had different arrangements, so these were unused—I don’t recall.
The sighted placemats definitely weren’t used.
But this was the tasting at which the author sought New-York Port-drinking company, and found it.

An early version of the TN page code, the name appearing at the top. And the /Cochin-Bold font still looks good.

The cork of the Cockburn “believed 1950’s” said Cockburn 1960. So not perfect, but not bad.

In 2007 the abbreviation for Cockburn was “C”. In late 2011 there was discussion, others preferring “Ck”.
I tried “exerting a little parental authority here: no. Cockburn had a century of being the most prestigious and highly-priced port, and for that reason is awarded the single letter. The records are very clear about the former (and perhaps future) relative prestige of this name.“
But no, the consensus was against me: it became “Ck”.

The code that made this was 907 lines.
For comparison, the version of 11th February 2019 is ≈15× longer at 13,669 lines, partly because it has twelve page types: /Glasses, /TastingNotes, /PlaceName, /PrePour, /VoteRecorder, /DecantingNotes, /Accounts, /CorkDisplay, /NeckTags, /DecanterLabels, /StickyLabels, /DistillerLog.

A draft of these placemats was made using Adobe Illustrator, about three weeks before the event.
(The Illustrator file was converted to PDF in March 2015.)
Placemats for earlier events were also made in Illustrator.
But the used placemats were made in PostScript.
So this seems to have been the event at which placemats switched from being artisanal to being industrial.

Before the software:
made using Adobe Illustrator, with the two pages in separate files.
(The Illustrator files were converted to PDF in March 2015.)
And abbreviating Quinta do Noval to a ‘Q’ is slightly embarrassing.

This design can be nearly replicated in the early-2015 software using the following parameters.

The found Postscript file was last modified 17 August 1997.
Not remembered whether this tasting happened, nor, if it did, it was as guessed to be held on the following Saturday.
I just don’t know.
And possible guests have been asked, who also have no memory of such a tasting.
So perhaps this file was only a doodle.

Postscript file converted to PDF in May 2019, after minor modifications such as updating font names and setting the page size.
Self-evidently this PostScript is not general-purpose placemat software; instead it’s a collection of custom graphics.

For tastings in 1988, 1989, 1990, the vintages being ≥1955 and mostly ≤1977, various placemats were made using (memory slightly fails) either Illustrator or FreeHand.
These were lost in a hard-disk crash during 1990: the lesson about backups was thoroughly learnt.
After which, and until 2001, tastings were infrequent.

Thee we invoke, Liber Pater: be present now, as you were at every step when what we are about to drink was made.
For under your care the finest grapes were picked by gentle hands; under your care they were trodden and turned to wine.
Be present too, Silvanus, for you gave of the long-lasting cork, in whose clean embrace the wine has slept for many years, disturbed by no excess of heat or cold.
Come, Immortal Gods, and grant that we may enjoy these wines as their makers intended.